The morning alarm bell rings. Hit snooze, I tell myself, and go back to bed.
“Do you want fries with that?” Asks the girl behind the lunch counter. Go ahead, I tell myself, forget about the salad.
Walking passed the gym after work — skip it, I tell myself, take the day off.
Pulling up to my house at night, you’re too tired to write, I tell myself, sprawl out on the couch and watch TV.
No, no, no,no, a thousand times NO! Or do you, like so many of us, say yes? Yes to oversleeping, yes to eating poorly, yes to being lazy, and yes to procrastinating.
Why is it so damn difficult to do right? To do the things we know we ought to do, the things we promise ourselves we will do tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow. But for today, hit snooze, we tell ourselves, and go back to bed.
If your life depended on it, do you think you could (or would) change your behaviors? While most sane people will confidently answer this question in the affirmative, less than a quarter of those who actually live through their first heart attack will go on to improve their eating and exercise habits. Over 75% of people, in other words, will not change their behaviors, even to save their lives.
There’s a war going on inside all of us, it’s Us versus Ourselves. We feel the person we could be beating beneath the person we are. These feelings, this anxiousness, exists for a reason. And if we make the mistake of ignoring it for too long we will remain forever haunted by what might have been — what we might have been.
How then do we escape a life of quiet desperation and live a more fulfilling existence?
Acceptance
The first step is to acknowledge that a change in our way of life is needed. We cannot change anything unless we accept it.
If you need convincing, then an easy way to determine how necessary it is for us to change is to take note of how often, how terribly often, you are afflicted by feelings of regret, by feelings of guilt, and by feelings of anxiety and depression. The overwhelming majority of neurotic symptoms such as these are, according to Carl Jung, a direct result of an inadequate approach to life. They (the bad feelings) are meant to act as signals. Signals that communicate the necessity of change.
When troubled by negative emotional states, however, most people choose to take the easy road. Instead of changing their behaviors, they try to run away from them, or they try to dull them by taking drugs, and by drinking, and by pursuing mindless pleasures. For a while, this may work. But, in the long run, it only makes things worse. At some point or another, the easy road always, always ends up merging into the hard.
After accepting that change is indeed needed, the question becomes: what kind of changes are most conducive to a fulfilling life?
Self-Actualization
Self-Actualization is the achievement of one’s full potential through creativity, independence, spontaneity, and a grasp of the real world. To be self-actualized, in other words, is to be at one’s best.
If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life. ~ Abraham Maslow
But after years of stagnation, years of in which our bad habits and destructive patterns of behavior have solidified, how can we become self-actualized?
Pick A Purpose
The journey to self-actualization begins with the selection of an aim or purpose to our existence. In making this selection people sometimes get tripped up into believing that it requires the determination of their true passion. The problem with this approach, however, is that it overlooks the fact that our passions oftentimes follow the development of our skills.
Accordingly, if you are uncertain of where your passions lie it is unlikely you will discover them by thought alone. It is far better to choose something challenging that sparks your curiosity, and not worry about whether it is the perfect choice.
With that said, the selection of a goal will only have positive consequences if we build the better habits which go along with it and, ultimately, move us forward in its pursuit.
Having something to aim at is important, not so much because of the external rewards, but because of the transformation that goals force us to undergo. Trying to do something difficult forces us to leave our comfort zones as we develop new skills and cultivate discipline. We discover in the process that we are not as helpless as we once thought.
Take Action
The problem for many of us though is that we struggle in moving from the sewing of a goal to the reaping of its actions.
People often blame their inability to take productive action on their anxiety, depression, fear, or lack of confidence. Before taking the actions necessary to pursue their aims such people think that they must first rid themselves of their negative emotions. This, however, is a mistake.
Why? Because the negative emotions people try and rid themselves of (prior to pursuing their aims) are by and large the result of both flawed behavioral patterns and the avoidance of facing up to their fears. Meditation and introspection alone can and will never cure anyone of these feelings. Rather, we must all learn that we are capable of taking purposeful action — even when we are feeling anxious and depressed.
The ability to move forward when we feel like stopping is one of distinguishing characteristics of self-actualizers. To self-actualize does not mean to transcend all human problems. It means to conquer them.
It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are in your life, there will always be negative emotions. What does matter, however, is whether or not you have the courage to act in the face of these negative emotions. Those who find such courage will live far better lives than those who cower in the face of their fears.
How do you gain such courage in the face of your fears?
Awareness
An effective way to gain the courage to act is to reflect on the eminence of death. It may sound morbid, but it works.
Stoic philosophers taught that those who become fully aware of just how brief life is will be far more likely to live in the most intense, courageous and, ultimately, fulfilling way possible.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
Almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ~ Steve Jobs
But awareness of death is a double-edged sword. If we delay instituting the changes required for living a more fulfilling life for too long, and instead we fritter away our time, then our awareness will give rise to a nagging feeling of regret. We will feel regret and we will feel guilty. And the cold, hard truth is that if we fritter away our time and waste our lives, we are guilty. Not of being sick, for that is what it is to be human, but rather — since we knew there was a remedy to our sickness — we are guilty of doing nothing to set about curing it.